Life of George Washington

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Life of George Washington

By Steven Lim

        

George Washington was born on Feb. 22, 1732.  He was the oldest son of Augustine Washington and his second wife Mary Ball Washington. They were prosperous Virginia     English descents.  He had 2 sons before with his first wife, Jane Butler Washington.  His son was Lawrence and Augustine, in 1718 and 1720.  George was born a year after when Augustine married Mary Ball.  Five other children followed Samuel, Elizabeth, John Augustine, Charles, and Mildred.  Mildred didn’t survive infancy.

In about 1735 the Washington family moved from Westmorland County to Augustine, Sr.’s plantation in Little Hunting Creek and lived there until they moved to a farm on the Rappahannock River opposite Fredericksburg in 1738. Washington study “rules of civility” in his early education and also study mathematics, surveying, the classics. George spends his early years on his family estate on Pope’s Creek along the Potomac River.  After his father died in 1743 he went to go live with his half brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon.  

Washington early ambition was to go to sea, but his mother prominent and effectively discouraged it.  Then George turns to surveying and securing.  His first appointment was to survey Lord Fairfax’s lands in the Shenandoah Valley.  He also helped Virginia town of Belhaven be lay out.  He was appointed surveyor for Culpeper County.  

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When Washington and his brother Barbados tried to help cure Lawrence of tuberculosis but in that effort Lawrence died in 1752. After they returned.  Washington inherited the Mount Vernon estate I.  Which he expanded to about 7,300 acres by 1799.

Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis when she was twenty six year old on January 1759.  She had two Children John Parke and Martha Park Custis with Daniel Parke Custis. They were one of the greatest fortunes in Virginia.  Washington was name their legal Guardian two years later and devoted his time and energy over the next sixteen years managing the ...

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